Lock up your data

Recent online privacy breaches should put data security at the top of Flanders’ digital agenda

From addresses and birthdays to relationships and credit card details, huge parts of all our lives are now stored online, and we trust agencies and corporations to keep them safe. But a series of recent data leaks should have us questioning just how safe the brave new digital world really is and how security can be improved.

Around mid-December, news reports surfaced that the personal information of hundreds of solar panel owners in Flanders had been briefly accessible to anyone with a login and password to the website of the Flemish energy regulator, VREG.

Just before Christmas, an online data leak at the railway operator NMBS Europe exposed the names, addresses and birthdates of 700,000 international customers.

Two weeks later, the job-search website Jobat involuntarily dumped the salary details of 4,000 users online.

Linda A Thompson
(April 17, 2013)

Action sought on jihad fighters

Muslim youth from Flanders and Brussels are feeling the pressure to go and fight in Syria

Two parents from Flanders are in Syria, hoping they can find and convince their sons, who have gone to fight on the side of rebels, to come home. Meanwhile, politicians have come up with a remarkable selection of proposals for what to do about the problem of growing numbers of youths being recruited to travel to foreign war zones to take part in jihad.

Last week, Dimitri Bontinck from Antwerp was in Syria looking for his 16-year-old son, Jejoen, while another father from Vilvoorde was reported to have departed on the same mission. As Flanders Today went to press, neither had made contact with his son.

Alan Hope
(April 17, 2013)